- Teacher-made assessment strategies
in the report card or weighted into the grade for that subject. For example, the grade for mathematics may include
an assessment of group cooperation or self regulation during mathematics lessons. Some schools and teachers
endorse including social skills arguing that developing such skills is important for young students and that students
need to learn to work with others and manage their own behaviors in order to be successful. Others believe that
grades in subject areas should be based on the cognitive performances—and that if assessments of social skills are
made they should be clearly separated from the subject grade on the report card. Obviously, clear criteria such as
those contained in analytical scoring rubrics should be used if social skills are graded.
Teachers often find it difficult to decide whether effort and improvement should be included as a component of
grades. One approach is for teachers to ask students to submit drafts of an assignment and make improvements
based on the feedback they received. The grade for the assignment may include some combination of the score for
the drafts, the final version, and the amount of improvement the students made based on the feedback provided. A
more controversial approach is basing grades on effort when students try really hard day after day but still cannot
complete their assignments well. These students could have identified special needs or be recent immigrants that
have limited English skills. Some school districts have guidelines for handling such cases. One disadvantage of
using improvement as a component of grades is that the most competent students in class may do very well initially
and have little room for improvement—unless teachers are skilled at providing additional assignments that will
help challenge these students.
Teachers often use “hodgepodge grading”, i.e. a combination of achievement, effort, growth, attitude or class
conduct, homework, and class participation. A survey of over 8,500 middle and high school students in the US state
of Virginia supported the hodgepodge practices commonly used by their teachers (Cross & Frary, 1999).
How should grades be calculated?
Two options are commonly used: absolute grading and relative grading. In absolute grading grades are assigned
based on criteria the teacher has devised. If an English teacher has established a level of proficiency needed to
obtain an A and no student meets that level then no A's will be given. Alternatively if every student meets the
established level then all the students will get A's (Popham, 2005). Absolute grading systems may use letter grades
or pass/fail.
In relative grading the teacher ranks the performances of students from worst to best (or best to worst) and
those at the top get high grades, those in the middle moderate grades, and those at the bottom low grades. This is
often described as “grading on the curve” and can be useful to compensate for an examination or assignment that
students find much easier or harder than the teacher expected. However, relative grading can be unfair to students
because the comparisons are typically within one class, so an A in one class may not represent the level of
performance of an A in another class. Relative grading systems may discourage students from helping each other
improve as students are in competition for limited rewards. In fact, Bishop (1999) argues that grading on the curve
gives students a personal interest in persuading each other not to study as a serious student makes it more difficult
for others to get good grades.
What kinds of grade descriptions should be used?
Traditionally a letter grade system is used (e.g. A, B, C, D, F ) for each subject. The advantages of these grade
descriptions are they are convenient, simple, and can be averaged easily. However, they do not indicate what